This conversation between artist Maja Ruznic and art historian Erika Doss explores the contemporary art world's interest in spiritual modernism through the lens of Ruznic’s practice.

Ruznic and Doss reflect on modern and contemporary art that examines the meaning of faith, devotion, and ritual through engagement with religious subjects and imagery.

This conversation considers how and why religion “matters” for contemporary art. While religion has been largely ignored in 20th and 21st-century histories of modern American art, a growing number of artists demonstrate personal interest in understanding how faith and the sacred coexist in secular, modern times.

Ruznic and Doss will discuss how contemporary art has centered more efficacious approaches to the cultural work of religion, with a particular focus on Ruznic’s paintings in the St. Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art.

New Mexico Museum of Art, St. Francis Auditorium is located at 107 W Palace Avenue, Santa Fe, NM, 87501.

Erika Doss is an art historian and author of Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (1991), Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy (1995), Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image (1999), Looking at Life Magazine (editor, 2001), Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010), American Art of the 20th-21st Centuries (2017), and Spiritual Moderns: Twentieth-Century American Artists and Religion (2023).

The recipient of several Fulbright awards, Doss has held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.